We've had these two boys munching on our pasture for the last month, and they're doing great. I've been thinking about adding a ruminant to the mix of animals and pasture rotations for a while now. The basic logic: pigs aren't very efficient at converting grass to energy, and if the grass is moderately mature or tall, they won't touch it at all. If I want to fully utilize my 5 acres efficiently, I need to get something to eat that grass. Enter the cattle.

These two steers are a Jersey/Holstein mix. They started their life on a dairy farm in Arlington, were bottle fed at a hobby farm in Mount Vernon, and came to us at about six months old and about 350 pounds. I'm grazing them ahead of the pigs, and experimenting with moving the hogs in after the cows have eaten the grass down a bit. With the lush growth of spring, it's actually been difficult for these guys to keep up with the grass, even in the small paddocks I create with electric fencing. I wanted to start with a small number of cattle to make sure I didn't get more than the land could feed. As the season continues, and the grass slows down in growth and gets less nutritious, I'll be curious to see how much land they need.

These steers are destined for the table, and I have been wavering on when to slaughter them. If I slaughter them in the fall, I won't have to provide winter housing and hay, but they won't have grown to their full size and may not be as fat as is ideal. If I wait, they'd get slaughtered in early summer of next year to maximize grass fattening on the spring flush. I think I'm probably going to slaughter in the fall,so that I can have the pigs and the cattle done on the same day and minimize the work and stress for me over the winter. Since I'm unsure how the meat will end up, I'm going to selling the beef that we don't use at a reduced price and asking buyers for feedback. It's going to be nutritious grass fed beef, but it might be quite lean.

If you want to reserve a half (or whole) beef, just let me know. I'll be doing a more formal announcement a bit later in the summer.

Fall is a popular time to slaughter, but i've had to reserve slots months in advance in order to get it done; best to check with your customer slaughter guy about it and schedule in a time per his reccomendation. They've been as much as 4 months out at times.

I've found that 1 unit of cow (=1,000lbs) eats about all of the grass on 1.5 acre of river bottom land; so I stock my summer pastures at about 1 cow per acre, figuring to put them on the pasture in May and off in october. Towards the end of that period, when the forage is short, I'll supplement with feed that the cows find tasty, but isn't grass. Apples, pears, plums, whatever comes in on the truck that's cow appropriate. I do that to add some weight to the cows and give them some calories to build up some fat. I've done a straight grass-fed holstein steer and it was very, very lean. So lean that the hamburger wouldn't stick together in patties.

Keeping a cow over the winter is more than just the hay or feed cost; when temperatures dip you can't get the waste to compost, and I usually have to confine them on a fixed paddock to save the sod, and that means that I have a pile of waste to deal with. Current ethos about that is to stockpile it and keep rain off it to prevent leaching, and then spread on the fields during the growing season or compost and then spread.

The place I bought has a manure lagoon and a set of pumps and graded concrete slabs so I'm actually better set up to deal with off-season manure than I have ever been. It's really nice.

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George

6/13/2013 09:01:21 pm

I'd hold them over honestly. 350lbs now, means maybe another 350lbs in 6 months. Your final weights will be pretty low, why slaughter this year for lower returns, when you could take this time to see how winter goes for 2 cattle on your farm, vs having to make that decision with possibly more head next year? That is assuming you get more cattle. The hay will be almost a non issue, a round bale of haylage a week, throw in a few squares for added dry matter and you're set. Also, I assume you have some sort of mineral box out for them right now correct? Grazing summer grasses they usually need a good amount of salt, and trace minerals which vary from farm to farm. Here we need to feed extra magnesium (lactating cows) and selenium (low in the soil) We use Fertrell's Nutril-Balancer and it's worked well. We also feed kelp for a Vitamin A source which keeps pink eye at bay.

On our farm we leave cattle out on pasture all winter, and the sod survives except for some strips where we lay out round bales. A couple quick passes with a grass/grain seeder in the spring and we're back in business, no fuss no muss.

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Jeff

6/20/2013 01:28:56 am

Thanks for the comments George. I can't imagine leaving cattle out on the grass in the winter here. It's so wet they would just tear everything to shreds, no? I'm also fairly risk intolerant when it comes to spending money, so I'm hesitant to plop over some cash on hay and haylage and modify the barn to provide adequate shelter for the cattle AND the pigs. Our pork is incredibly decadent, so perhaps some lean beef will be good to diversify our diets.

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George

6/20/2013 08:44:19 pm

I don't think your winters are any more harsh than in PEnnsylvania, are they? You do have to still move the cattle in the winter... I believe you have the acreage now to do that right? Cattle don't need shelter in the winter, our Angus stay out 365, they just need fed. Keeping cattle year round will require an investment in good pasture, and either hay equipment, paying someone to make hay, or buying it in outright... There are guys who graze without feeding hay over the winter, although I haven't found the right balance to do that in PA and MD.